To Dust
by Poppy Grave Dreams
Summary: Zelgadis discovers a secret concerning Lina, one of which she isn't aware. The Red World is imperiled once more and it is up to the Slayers to save it—but to do so may mean a sacrifice none of them are willing to make.


Disclaimer: The owner of Slayers is not me.

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**To Dust**

**Prologue**

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The light shed by the bracket-borne torches lining the underground chamber's walls failed to illumine much of the large space. Layered shadows crept over the stone like cobwebs and twined around the thick pillars ringing the chamber, pooling between the supports and the cracked walls.

Figures swathed in colorful robes—no two sharing the same hue—slowly filtered into the chamber. They met one another, some solemn and others more eager in carriage, and held conversation in hushed tones that blended with the sputtering backdrop noise of the torches.

The gathered individuals purposely stood away from the center, which was taken up by an elaborate magical array chalked on the flagstones with an altar and tall candelabra to the side.

Two women commanded attention as they strode down the spiraling flight of stairs. The one at the front—long, purple hair hanging lank around her haggard face, the sunken eyes of which were the same red matched by her bright robes—carried a small bundle in her arms, the white, rune-embroidered cloth wrapping it failing to conceal a single slender leg that had escaped its confines and hung listlessly. Following at her heels was a severely-composed elder in purple whose sharp features conveyed a sense that, regardless of her age, she could cut anyone down a peg or several should she wish. The latter was accompanied with a short golem bearing a wooden chest over its misshaped head.

"Is everybody accounted for?" she addressed a well-groomed man as she entered the chamber proper, voice as steely as her hair, which had been braided and coiled into a bun.

"Yes, we were just waiting for you and Lana the Red, Head Sorceress Atanthe the Violet," he replied with a dip of his head in respect to Atanthe. The elderly woman issued a noise that may have been one of approval before turning to Lana.

"Mrs. Inverse, if you would," Atanthe gestured to the array in the chamber's center.

Clutching the body in her arms closer for a moment, the red-clad woman gave a shaky nod and approached the array. Careful not to smudge the meticulously laid lines, Lana eased herself into a squat and unwound the fabric from her burden as she set it into the middle of the array. The motionless girl's eyes were shut to the world, her body positioned as to give the impression of sleeping. Wavy locks of hair tumbled down her back and snaked over her folded arms, the orange tresses all the more vibrant against her ashen skin.

"Chaos taints her," Atanthe, who had moved to the altar and set out an arrangement of clothing and lit the candelabra, choked out as the girl was removed from the cloth with its runes that suppressed any magical aura from escaping its confines. The others assembled had reacted similarly, even those who stood furthest away cringing from the tiny figure as if it were cursed.

"She i- wa- _is_," Lana finally decided, "is only eight years old. We never would have suspected she would be capable of what she did. How did she even—"

"Cease your rambling," Atanthe interjected curtly with an ireful expression, quickly losing patience for the other sorceress' rambling. "Magic—which your daughter had in spades—has a curious way of calling to fate. What is done is done, and what matters now is stabilizing the magic running rampant in her body before her idiocy dooms us all."

Lana made to argue, but wilted under her conflicted feelings. Sighing, she stroked her daughter's hair once, before rising to the entirety of her short height.

"Sorcerers and sorceresses, take your place. You are the best of the Zephilian Magic Guild, and tonight you will use your skills for country and life," commanded Atanthe, authority ringing in her voice and prompting the congregation to assemble around the magical array.

Atanthe grabbed Lana by a sleeve, fixing her with an unreadable expression.

"Lana, you stay out of this."

The woman's red eyes widened.

"But—"

"Listen to me! This is a very demanding ritual. When we are successful, whatever the product is will need somebody. As the child's mother, you're the best choice."

Throat bobbing as she swallowed past a knot in her throat, Lana could only nod her assent and step back from the magical symbols.

The air in the chamber became palpably heavy, almost suffocating, as massive amounts of magic from talented practitioners was called forth and concentrated into the chalk design around the child. The array's white marks turned an eerie blue-violet in color as it absorbed and directed the magic it was fed. Flames in the same color started rising up, small and mellow at first but quickly gathering in strength until they swirled and howled with wind-like movements within the array's confines.

A breathy gasp followed by a signing groan signaled the first death, the tidy man that Atanthe had spoken to collapsing to the ground as an emaciated corpse.

The flames crawled like maggots and lashed about the girl in their grasp, her doll-like form starting to be lifted into the air and upright by the force of the magic that swelled around her. She started to descend even as the magic around her grew more violent and roared its fury, as the powerful sorcerers and their female counterparts crumpled lifelessly and the ones that remained flagging in strength.

Eyes snapped open amidst the raw power, brilliant gold glaring through before fading to red. The magic died out rapidly from there, a whoosh of wind carrying cold-colored embers blowing out from the center in every direction and snapping at the robes of the magic practitioners.

The torches all died out at once.

Silence crashed down upon the chamber, perturbing after the deafening noise that had been filling it only a moment ago. And only two remained—Lana and her daughter.

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**A decade later . . .**

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Zelgadis thanked the librarian for the short tour and went off to lose himself amidst the bookshelves. Zephilia was famous not only for its wine, but for the level of skill they achieved in their sorcerers. Unfortunately, the Zephilian Magic Guild was also possessive of its resources, and so it was a pleasant surprise that they had acquiesced to Zelgadis' request to access their archives when so many failed to earn similar permission.

_Then again, when you save the world a few times and don't earn yourself a bad reputation in the process, then people are generally grateful to you,_ Zelgadis thought to himself with a small smirk, thinking of all the restaurant-owners, royals, and settlements that Lina had upset on their adventures. Granted, most people didn't know the scale of what he and his friends did for the Red World, but tales of their exploits had a tendency to get around after some time.

He scanned the shelves of a section specific to chimeras, tucked all the way in one discrete corner and behind ignored sections such as 'magical hygiene' and 'beastman cultures,' taking note of the tomes that seemed promising. Pulling out one of them for closer inspection, _A Treatise on the Effects of Chimera-Crafting Reflected on the Astral Plane_, he paused as a finger grazed a small book that had been hidden behind the much larger one.

Not wanting to overlook anything (and Zelgadis was aware that some patrons would hide particular books to ensure nobody else could find it before they came back later for it—he knew, because he had that same habit), he removed the volume and read the inscription on its plain leather cover.

"_A Proposition Concerning Magical Possession and Sapience Wrought by Form_ by Atanthe the Violet, huh?" he commented aloud, studying the title for a bit longer as he worked its meaning out fully in his head. It certainly was a mouthful, and not exactly what he would call a usual subject matter. Would it be useful to him?

Probably not, he decided, and started to put it back.

Zelgadis paused when he saw a niche going into the wall that the errant book had been concealing. Curiosity piqued, he reached a hand into it, finding a button and pressing it before he even realized what he was doing,

His eyes widened as the bookcase in front of him moved back into the wall and then swung to the side, revealing a stone passageway with stairs leading downwards. Zelgadis hesitated—should he really be doing this?—before choosing to ignore any qualms going down strange hidden passages.

_If I'm being impulsive, it's just because my reckless companions have rubbed off on me_.

After securing the two books he held in a satchel secured underneath his cloak, Zelgadis stepped through. Though it was faint, his keen ears easily picked up on the slight rumbling sound the bookcase made as it moved back into place, and now he saw the niche with the button in it from the other side. Relieved to know that he could still get out without making like Lina and blasting a hole in a wall or several (because he would like to be able to go places, especially esteemed collections of magical knowledge, without causing a lot of damage and getting himself chased out), Zelgadis was much more reassured from there to continue on.

He called forth a magical light to see by as he descended the stairs, straining to see and hear anything but stone and the sound of his footsteps respectively, but there was nothing to pick up on.

It was a long flight of stairs and Zelgadis could sense the air change the further down he went, becoming much more stagnant and earthy. If he had to guess, he was underground, and soon found himself in a large, circular chamber. Though the orb of light he had summoned would do very little for a human, Zelgadis' eyes were much better suited to seeing in low-lighting, though it was taking some moments to adjust.

When they did, what he first noticed was the dozen, give or take, skeletons roughly in the center of the chamber.

What the heck had happened here?

A suspicion niggled Zelgadis that it was probably a highly experimental and extremely lethal magical experiment. Guilds and the homes of sorcerers typically had secret rooms much like this one wherein to conduct such unpredictable magic. Judging by the bodies, everybody who had carried knowledge of this room had taken it to their graves.

He crossed over to the human remains, eyebrows rising when he caught sight of the array that remained inscribed upon the floor. Pausing beside one skeleton, he gave it some consideration. Grey hair remained attached to the skull, rather neat for the braided bun it had, but it was the violet robes of which he took particular notice.

_Atanthe the Violet?_

She was the last head of the Zephilian Magic Guild, Zelgadis knew from the portraits he had passed of the current head's predecessors when exploring the guild headquarters, and according to the plaque underneath her portrait she had gone missing one night along with the guild's uppermost tier. It had been a hard blow on the guild that even now they were hardly recovering from.

Looked like the most common guess behind the reason why they had mysteriously vanished—supposedly performing an experiment (a likely illegal one at that)—was the truth.

Atanthe had also written the book he now had in his possession. It had probably been placed there on purpose, to hide the passageway.

Magical possession and sapience wrought by form? That was now sounding much more suspicious than it had before. Withdrawing the book from his satchel, Zelgadis flipped through it until he found what he was looking for: a page dedicated to an array diagram. Glancing between the one on the page and the array before him in person, the chimera confirmed that they matched exactly.

This wasn't any concern of his, was it? No, and he probably shouldn't involve himself with anything as sordid-seeming as this was.

Zelgadis frowned at the book he held, as if blaming it for intriguing him. What he did know was that just putting it back—and risking somebody else getting their hands on it—made him very uneasy.

When Zelgadis left the magic guild, nobody noticed the addition he smuggled out.

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**End of prologue.**

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Author's Note:

I hope you guys enjoy this—I liked writing it, although I definitely felt more comfortable once I was writing Zelgadis' part. This story is anime-based (though I take from other sources of Slayers material as I please), though I exclude Revolution and Evolution-R on account of having only watched through them a couple times, and that was years ago.

Please review, I appreciate anything from a simple 'I like it' to constructive criticism or ideas or whatever.

Also, I have a poll on my profile about stories described on my profile that you'd like to see written. It would only take like, a minute at most to give a short review and vote and would really make my day.


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